Speaker 1: My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast
Speaker 1: is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what
Speaker 1: brings them happiness. Here's my old friend Tom Welsh. He's
Speaker 1: a music aficionado. He runs one of the biggest music
Speaker 1: festivals in America, Big Years in Knoxville, Tennessee. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: All right, So Tom, you have never taken accid?
Speaker 3: That is true. I have never taken ascid.
Speaker 1: What powerful drugs have you taked? Do you have you
Speaker 1: taken any powerful drugs? Because I feel like someone who's
Speaker 1: involved in a music festivals, because I should should probably
Speaker 1: have a past with exotic hallucigens.
Speaker 4: It's not on my CV. But you're you're generally probably correct,
Speaker 4: right as sort of an understanding or assumption, right, a
Speaker 4: passage like, look at all these guys that are in
Speaker 4: this work, they've been drop an acid for you, whatever
Speaker 4: that sort of thing is. But no, I from my
Speaker 4: California days maybe look the part.
Speaker 2: But yeah, when I first met you had very long hair.
Speaker 4: I did that to blend in if you live in
Speaker 4: San Francisco at a certain age a certain time and
Speaker 4: just sort of become part of the fabric with guys
Speaker 4: walking around with long hair.
Speaker 1: I just felt you have lost You had long hair
Speaker 1: kind of the same time Metallica had long hair. And
Speaker 1: then did you get the cut the same time as Metallica.
Speaker 3: Got the cut.
Speaker 4: I'd have to check when they went to the barbershop.
Speaker 4: But I have a vivid memory that you and I
Speaker 4: had not seen each other period of time. Somewhere in there,
Speaker 4: I shaved my head and we saw each other again
Speaker 4: at an event, and you first thing out of your
Speaker 4: mouth was new Metallica. I was flattered, confused, but honored
Speaker 4: by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know who did it.
Speaker 2: It was a compliment. It was a compliment.
Speaker 3: Let's just say.
Speaker 4: I don't know the Metallica guys, but they needed to
Speaker 4: do it, and I needed to do it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was time. That comes time in
Speaker 1: life for a haircut. So listen, tell me this. You
Speaker 1: do have faced well. The podcast is about joy. I've
Speaker 1: known you for some time, and one of the most
Speaker 1: joyful experiences that I think we had together was going
Speaker 1: to see a gentleman by the name of Iggy Pop.
Speaker 2: Remembers going to see Iggy Pop. I do all right,
Speaker 2: And we went to see.
Speaker 1: Iggy and I loved watching because I liked the songs,
Speaker 1: and I liked seeing Iggy being alive after his story
Speaker 1: and as of recording to this, he's still alive, which
Speaker 1: is kind of goes wrong. Well, it's it's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing given the kind of the group of people he
Speaker 1: was running with back in the day. Because you're so
Speaker 1: heavily and I think of you as being someone who's
Speaker 1: heavily involved in music.
Speaker 2: But you're not a musician, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Well, I came up as a musician.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me how that happened.
Speaker 1: The imagine we're a psychotherapy session and it's the first session,
Speaker 1: and you have to go through all the boring stuff
Speaker 1: about who you are and how you got to this point,
Speaker 1: and then we can get to the bit where you
Speaker 1: can't go to.
Speaker 2: The bathroom without wearing a hat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let us be my first psychotherapy session because you've
Speaker 4: never been.
Speaker 3: No, I think this is it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, just relax, take a say breath. You're in
Speaker 1: a safe place, and tell me how it began with
Speaker 1: you in music.
Speaker 4: Probably, like many many kids growing up in America and
Speaker 4: maybe in the suburbs, you are invited at a certain
Speaker 4: age to sign up to take music lessons in your school.
Speaker 2: Where was this?
Speaker 4: I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and it's probably the
Speaker 4: I was about to say second grade, but it might
Speaker 4: be fourth grade where they take you into assembly and
Speaker 4: they pass out the sheet of instruments that you might
Speaker 4: select from to begin music lessons. Fourth grade, let's say,
Speaker 4: And everybody went home with this eight and a half
Speaker 4: by eleven. No, it's but the larger sheet with a
Speaker 4: to z all the instruments you could choose that the
Speaker 4: school offered.
Speaker 2: Like a very well equipped school. Was that very well?
Speaker 4: We're talking about the seventies, right when music was still
Speaker 4: in the schools.
Speaker 2: Active music there now, right.
Speaker 3: And people encouraged this.
Speaker 4: This is good for everybody, good for students, good for kids, band,
Speaker 4: all this sort of stuff, marching bands and the rest.
Speaker 4: And I went home and immediately said I want to
Speaker 4: play the drums, and my father said pick something else.
Speaker 4: So I went back with the sheet into the teacher,
Speaker 4: whoever it was at the time, and I had checked
Speaker 4: the box for saxophone. So I grew up as a
Speaker 4: saxophone player. I was in a family with three brothers
Speaker 4: and a sister. All of us played music together. Parents
Speaker 4: musical people too, not professionally, But there was music in
Speaker 4: the house all the time.
Speaker 1: Was it a very stable environment? Did you have a
Speaker 1: stable upbringing? It was like an escape into music from
Speaker 1: the you know, the disruption of a wild family life
Speaker 1: or anything like that.
Speaker 4: These stories will wreck and bore and ruin all of
Speaker 4: your understandings of a life and music. But yes, it
Speaker 4: was a stable family that cared about each other. Still
Speaker 4: to this day, we care about each other and communicate.
Speaker 4: There was music in the household because it brought joy
Speaker 4: and fun and something to do. The Christmas Carols was
Speaker 4: the big the brass. Everybody lined up with their brass
Speaker 4: instruments to blow the Christmas carouse out the front door
Speaker 4: into the neighborhood that may or may not have wished
Speaker 4: for that to happen. And it was just the rhythm
Speaker 4: of a noisy family that you.
Speaker 2: Still play, You still play the saxophone.
Speaker 4: Well, the last vestiges of this are really still the
Speaker 4: Christmas Holidays.
Speaker 3: With this.
Speaker 4: Year, the honkas squeak brass corral emerges once a year
Speaker 4: and then submerges again. There's another generation of kids, the grandkids,
Speaker 4: nephews and nieces that also picked this up. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a musical family that is not professionally musical, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So life takes its course and you end up.
Speaker 1: When I met you, you were in San Francisco, that's right.
Speaker 1: At that point, you were running or managing bands, and
Speaker 1: you had.
Speaker 2: A music store. It wasn't really a store.
Speaker 4: I had moved to California with the band actually to
Speaker 4: chase the American dream, which everybody knows is write one
Speaker 4: song and then become super famous and you're off to forever.
Speaker 1: And these days I think it's just an Instagram post,
Speaker 1: but it's much the same thing.
Speaker 4: This was the olden days when you actually had to
Speaker 4: have talent, have some talent, and record something with people
Speaker 4: who knew what they were doing. So we tough that
Speaker 4: out for a period of time in the club scene
Speaker 4: in the West Coast, network up and down, and decided
Speaker 4: after a long run that we really weren't getting along
Speaker 4: at all with each other and it was time to
Speaker 4: stop that.
Speaker 2: So that's my experience of being in a band.
Speaker 3: Too.
Speaker 4: Inevitably, you've come to that crossroads that maybe I should
Speaker 4: be doing something else. What I really wanted to do
Speaker 4: was to run a record company. I really love the
Speaker 4: idea of working with musicians, not necessarily being the guy
Speaker 4: in the middle of the stage jumping around, but to
Speaker 4: help others get their work moving, get their No.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting thing. Why is that from the family background?
Speaker 1: Do you think that they create and the opportunity for
Speaker 1: little Tom to choose the drums or the saxophone.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think in a very small way, as a musician
Speaker 4: and working in a band and trying to make something happen,
Speaker 4: we never really went anywhere, but you get a feeling
Speaker 4: of what's like to be on the stage, to have
Speaker 4: a room full of people looking at you and waiting
Speaker 4: for you to do. I don't need to tell you
Speaker 4: you know exactly what this is, right. The exchange between
Speaker 4: audience and performer is a very peculiar human moment. In
Speaker 4: my opinion. Very few people probably want to do that,
Speaker 4: and even fewers still do it well. And I think ultimately,
Speaker 4: as a performer, musician, artist, you have to know for
Speaker 4: yourself what am I doing here on this stage, What
Speaker 4: is it I'm trying to put across. What do I
Speaker 4: want to share with people? What I want people to
Speaker 4: hear hear me say? Because after all, I've had a
Speaker 4: room full of people who are now looking at you saying,
Speaker 4: all right, we've given you our time and attention and
Speaker 4: maybe five bucks.
Speaker 3: Say it, do it?
Speaker 2: Did you have anything particularly that you wanted to say?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think at the time, as young musicians trying to
Speaker 4: express fun, happiness, some great songs and have a yeah,
Speaker 4: I have a damn good time. It starts there, doesn't
Speaker 4: it with.
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think when I was in Bines, I
Speaker 1: think I was trying to say, was I'm available for
Speaker 1: casual sex? This is bathed in there, definitely, But I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the way you said. I think nowadays
Speaker 1: i'd be on an app or something and just say it.
Speaker 4: The menu of things, like I'm available for that, barring
Speaker 4: that I'll take all the drugs you're offering me, yes,
Speaker 4: barring that I'll dip into the advance so we can
Speaker 4: spend it on beer money right now, yes, barring that
Speaker 4: I need a ride home.
Speaker 2: All right, So you end up running this record company?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Well right, okay, So we skipped a brief chapter there.
Speaker 4: When it turned out that music as a performer was
Speaker 4: not ultimately going to be my direction and calling, I thought,
Speaker 4: what I really want to do is work with other people,
Speaker 4: and I fall into literally fall into a small active
Speaker 4: record company in San Francisco at the time called New
Speaker 4: Albion Records, which had been going for some time charting
Speaker 4: trends and developments in modern composition and experimental classical music.
Speaker 4: This kind of in between area with very much of
Speaker 4: a West Coast and Pacific rim point of view. What
Speaker 4: we're talking about is music of the twentieth century, including
Speaker 4: people like Lou Harris and Terry Riley, Pauline Olaverro's, John Adams,
Speaker 4: John Cage, and then onward from there Carlstone and many others.
Speaker 4: This had a huge impact on me musically, personally, professionally, ultimately,
Speaker 4: and it.
Speaker 1: Is not the music you still listen to now that
Speaker 1: makes music you listen because it also is quite almost
Speaker 1: I don't want to be mean, but it sounds a
Speaker 1: little academic taste of music.
Speaker 2: Mean, I mean it to be mean, but it.
Speaker 1: Is very grown up and deep cut that that type
Speaker 1: of music.
Speaker 2: Do you listen to abba or yes?
Speaker 3: Not good?
Speaker 4: The new record really didn't move me the way I
Speaker 4: hoped to be moved. But then again, it's hard to
Speaker 4: sugar mil forever. You can try, as we might yeah,
Speaker 4: the short answer to a good question, you're in a
Speaker 4: common misconception, or there are no misconceptions in music. Everybody
Speaker 4: hears and understands and enjoys or doesn't enjoy it to
Speaker 4: their own taste. This is all out there for everybody's consumption, delectation,
Speaker 4: and and and take what you you can from it.
Speaker 4: But I came to believe, working in the area of
Speaker 4: modern composition, experimental fringes of electronic, improvised and beyond, these
Speaker 4: are all artists, perhaps living outside of the mainstream, but
Speaker 4: all of them are true and honest to the thing
Speaker 4: that they're trying to do. Nobody's trying to be academic
Speaker 4: or thumb in your eye on purpose in any way.
Speaker 4: These are people just expressing themselves quite differently that, as
Speaker 4: it happens, have maybe smaller audiences because this is rarefied,
Speaker 4: sometimes unusual, sometimes difficult to understand because the frame of
Speaker 4: reference is a little obscure or whatever it is. But
Speaker 4: I don't think for a second that any of those
Speaker 4: artists or any other artists are willfully trying to stay
Speaker 4: outside of your purview.
Speaker 3: Take a while to get there.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, So let's think that now you run, you're
Speaker 1: the managing director of this giant music festival, which is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest in the world.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, so you're flattering to say so, but that's
Speaker 4: maybe not quite right. I'm here with you in Knoxville, Tennessee,
Speaker 4: in the home of Big Years, which as a festival
Speaker 4: that has been going for this will be the tenth
Speaker 4: edition that happens in March of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: But I'm not being It's not hyperbolic really. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a huge festival.
Speaker 4: It has had an enormous and beautiful impact in I
Speaker 4: think the American landscape of music festivals and culture. Is
Speaker 4: it huge, probably one hundred and twenty five artists playing
Speaker 4: over four days in downtown Knoxville. It's intense. It's it's
Speaker 4: a rapturous deep dive into everything, all sorts of things
Speaker 4: all at one time.
Speaker 2: And see, that's what I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: So do you have a a polpulist thought in your
Speaker 1: head when you're booking acts? So, I mean, presumably you're
Speaker 1: involved in the choosing of who's going to play and
Speaker 1: who's not going to play. And do you say, well, look,
Speaker 1: we've already got five guys who are five different acts
Speaker 1: who are playing obscure saxophone mathematic compositions. Do we have
Speaker 1: anyone who's you know, doing covers of Partryes, Family or
Speaker 1: whatever people are listening to it?
Speaker 4: You know, A quick check suggests me, we don't have
Speaker 4: that artist locked in just yet, but maybe I can
Speaker 4: lean on you about that. Yes or no, there's no
Speaker 4: calculation beyond let's just find and invite really great musicians
Speaker 4: without necessarily thinking first of the area or the genre
Speaker 4: or the old record bins as we used to say
Speaker 4: that they're in. What's interesting about Big Ears and unique
Speaker 4: about Big Ears, in my opinion, is that it's the
Speaker 4: only festival that I can think of in the US,
Speaker 4: or certainly the first that wanted to be about just
Speaker 4: great music made by passionate, great people, regardless of genres. Typically,
Speaker 4: you and I would go to this festival that does
Speaker 4: this certain thing, or go off to another one that
Speaker 4: does a different certain thing, and the outcome of that
Speaker 4: is you have a good idea of what you're getting
Speaker 4: yourself into, you know, perhaps because you bought tickets, because
Speaker 4: you know all of the artists are playing in that
Speaker 4: festival where there's bluegrass, class school, heavy metal, whatever. But
Speaker 4: big Ears is putting all of us in the same
Speaker 4: place at the same time, so that you can move
Speaker 4: freely between one world of sound and another. And it's
Speaker 4: just all just great. As Ellington Tokellington said, beyond category,
Speaker 4: why can't we have all of those things in one
Speaker 4: place at one time.
Speaker 1: So let's zero in a little bit more on the
Speaker 1: personal nature of what brings you joy and that so
Speaker 1: clearly you get joy sharing different musical experiences with other people,
Speaker 1: all right, So that brings you joy professionally, all right.
Speaker 1: So in your life, for example, obviously everyone has a
Speaker 1: point where there is an absence of joy, and then
Speaker 1: there has to be, hopefully, at some point, a journey
Speaker 1: through joy. Because I feel that joy is an essential
Speaker 1: coping mechanism and that if you lack it, you can
Speaker 1: or if you like the ability to manufacture it, it
Speaker 1: can lead you into a dark path. That's certainly happened
Speaker 1: in my life. Is that something that's happened in yours?
Speaker 1: In your world?
Speaker 4: It's interesting you refer to joy as a coping mechanism.
Speaker 4: I'd like to hear more about that. I don't see
Speaker 4: it that way. I don't think I'm trying to think
Speaker 4: of my own personal experiences of joy when it comes
Speaker 4: to me in a variety of different moments, sometimes unpredictable,
Speaker 4: mostly unpredictable. Let's say, or I share it or try
Speaker 4: to generate it so that other people can have it
Speaker 4: in the context of music performances, festivals, and even simple
Speaker 4: as sharing records. This thing we used to do a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but why is it a coping mechanism?
Speaker 1: I think when I say a coping mechanism is because
Speaker 1: I'm aware of having to manufacture it when I have to,
Speaker 1: as opposed to I suppose when I don't have to,
Speaker 1: when I'm experiencing joy and don't and I'm not in
Speaker 1: need of it, I'm not aware of having to make it.
Speaker 2: I think I suppose, so at that point I think
Speaker 2: maybe it's a coping mechanism.
Speaker 4: This is think to me because I maybe I don't
Speaker 4: think of it quite this way. I'm thinking of examples
Speaker 4: where or instances where joy comes, it arrives, and for me,
Speaker 4: this is a Yeah. It's a powerful emotional and physical sensation.
Speaker 4: It's like a wave that arrives. I didn't summon it exactly.
Speaker 4: I didn't, so you have no power over it. Rolls
Speaker 4: in like the weather.
Speaker 3: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 4: Sometimes in circumstances, I'm thinking of a concert experience where
Speaker 4: the room, the sound, the energy, the people all converges
Speaker 4: in a moment where suddenly you're levitating and you're thinking, Wow,
Speaker 4: I'm being swept up into something that I'm absolutely moving
Speaker 4: to a higher a different plane.
Speaker 1: You'll think of a concert where any specific concert where
Speaker 1: that's a card for you or too many.
Speaker 4: Well many, well many, not not millions, but many. I
Speaker 4: think of while there was one here at Big Ears
Speaker 4: actually a few years ago, when I wasn't paying close
Speaker 4: attention to the program, I just ran into the Biju
Speaker 4: Theater to hear what was scheduled in that hour, and
Speaker 4: it was an hour of the music of Alvin Lucier
Speaker 4: that had been organized I think by Stephen O'Malley from
Speaker 4: Sun to I was so late, I wasn't quite sure
Speaker 4: who put this whole thing together, but it was a
Speaker 4: beautiful hour of Alvin Lucier's music, which is often quiet,
Speaker 4: still droning, very slow to unfold, so it's music of duration.
Speaker 4: You have to give it some time or else you're
Speaker 4: going to miss everything that's happening. And it was beautiful,
Speaker 4: and then Alvin himself came out on the stage. At
Speaker 4: this point, he's an elderly man who has done incredible
Speaker 4: work for a long period of time. I didn't know
Speaker 4: he was there, and so there was that moment.
Speaker 2: Of till he was playing, he wasn't playing his.
Speaker 4: Final well, there was an ensemble of people playing his music,
Speaker 4: and the last piece was Alvin's master work, or the
Speaker 4: piece that people know him for, called I Am Sitting
Speaker 4: in a Room, which is a classic of I'm not
Speaker 4: going to use the word academic that you're going to
Speaker 4: put out there, because it's not. It is a twentieth
Speaker 4: century experiments say deep deep cut. Okay, it's a little
Speaker 4: bit of a deep cup for a little.
Speaker 3: Depending on where you're going from from people.
Speaker 4: On the playlist, okay, I got but to hear Alvin
Speaker 4: himself sitting in a chair and to begin his piece,
Speaker 4: which is a slowly evolving electronic music piece based on
Speaker 4: he says a long sentence of paragraph that then goes
Speaker 4: into a kind of a looping mechanism that begins to
Speaker 4: pull apart like taffy, the sound texture of the words,
Speaker 4: until the words themselves become slowly unrecognizable. And it just
Speaker 4: turns into this cloud of sound. It's a conceptual piece, yes,
Speaker 4: but it's also quite moving I think, over a long,
Speaker 4: slow period of time, and the man himself was in
Speaker 4: this chair doing it. And I didn't know that until
Speaker 4: it happened, and I was taken away because of the
Speaker 4: serendipity of the moment. I was not sure that was
Speaker 4: on the program. I didn't know it happened, and I
Speaker 4: found myself floating away with joy. Here I am experiencing.
Speaker 4: This was interesting to me by that. First of all,
Speaker 4: you know, it sounds like a very joyful experience. But
Speaker 4: what you point out is that the composer himself is there,
Speaker 4: and so it's a very kind of It's much more
Speaker 4: intimate than perhaps the composer has been dead for two
Speaker 4: hundred years and someone's playing a piece of music.
Speaker 2: Right very well.
Speaker 1: Is it important then that the author of the piece
Speaker 1: be in the room for it to change the tombre,
Speaker 1: the feeling of the sensation, or can the right musician
Speaker 1: do that having not composed the piece. Because I think
Speaker 1: composition is important to you, I think authorship is important
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: But I'd be right in saying that.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's a yes, and because, of course, we have
Speaker 4: centuries worth of music now that we all enjoy and
Speaker 4: moves us for which we have no direct connection to
Speaker 4: the people who authored that music. Right, So this is
Speaker 4: of necessity we have to be able to there's something
Speaker 4: in that music that carries through the ages. Not to
Speaker 4: mention the millions of records that we have between us,
Speaker 4: made by artists who we will never encounter, but we
Speaker 4: love that music too. I've never seen the master musicians
Speaker 4: of Jujuoka, but these records are never too far away
Speaker 4: authorship or this question of maybe it's something extra, it's
Speaker 4: not essential, but here's the person who did this remarkable
Speaker 4: thing that is always satisfying, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Yes, it is, I think I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 1: I think I would be impressed by that too if
Speaker 1: it was, you know, if it was a painter who
Speaker 1: had done an amazing painting and suddenly they're standing next
Speaker 1: to you saying, how do you like it?
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, of course it's it's going to be
Speaker 2: a thing.
Speaker 1: People like to have that connection music, I think is
Speaker 1: that is an interesting and strange experience though, because I
Speaker 1: think music speaks a language that none of us actually
Speaker 1: understand but maybe that's because I'm not a true musician.
Speaker 3: You are a musician. Your audience knows this about you, right.
Speaker 4: Drummer, yeah, part time shower singer, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've done bits and pieces. But and certainly I think,
Speaker 1: like you know that Robin Williams and I were friendly,
Speaker 1: and Robin always had a jazz.
Speaker 2: Mentality about doing stand up.
Speaker 1: He always, you know, kind of talked about and stand
Speaker 1: up as a jazz improvisation almost, which I'm not a
Speaker 1: huge fan of. It's wrong to say I'm not a
Speaker 1: huge fan of jazz because it's too big an area.
Speaker 1: But there's not a lot of jazz that moves me
Speaker 1: that I've heard. But I get the idea of improvisation
Speaker 1: and an instrument. But that's what interests me about what
Speaker 1: you do, because at any point in big years, do
Speaker 1: you pick up your saxophone and go and play.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Well, they know why.
Speaker 4: I'm too busy working with this wonderful team of people
Speaker 4: to keep this thing rolling. But you're getting to an
Speaker 4: interesting point that I think about a lot, and probably
Speaker 4: a lot of people do. But somehow in our world,
Speaker 4: let's say, the Western contemporary commercial world, that we are
Speaker 4: moving around in the three and a half minute song
Speaker 4: became the central currency of music. Yeah, beatles before beatles
Speaker 4: and onward. But we sort of live in this commodification
Speaker 4: of music as the song. How did this come to be?
Speaker 4: Why is this crucial? Why is it interesting? Because, after all,
Speaker 4: music and sound is boundless and enormously different than you
Speaker 4: and I are sitting with our guitars singing a song
Speaker 4: in the AaB format with a catchy eight bark bridge.
Speaker 4: This somehow became a what do we say, a routine
Speaker 4: or the backdrop against which people understand music. I bought
Speaker 4: a record had fourteen songs on it. I like three
Speaker 4: of them. I was stuck with the whole album. It's
Speaker 4: got fourteen songs.
Speaker 2: Well, well, the argument used to be, wasn't that the album?
Speaker 1: Like if you take an album like the classic argument
Speaker 1: for this is the dark side of the moon, right, Like,
Speaker 1: in order to understand the music and the album, in
Speaker 1: order to appreciate the music in the album, you have
Speaker 1: to listen to the old album the way the artist
Speaker 1: constructed the album.
Speaker 4: But you've said something just a moment before this, which
Speaker 4: the secret is in what you said. There's something weird
Speaker 4: and mysterious and strange about music. The album, the record,
Speaker 4: the single, the wax cylinder, the CD. These are just
Speaker 4: containers for sound. So Pink Floyd, we love them. I
Speaker 4: have those, we have those records. We've shared those records.
Speaker 4: They are incredible documents of music and sound because the
Speaker 4: guys knew that they had a container they needed to
Speaker 4: manage and release into the world.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: So you think the container dictates what the artist puts
Speaker 1: into it is what has.
Speaker 4: Happened with the arrival of the Internet. Now anybody can
Speaker 4: make any music available out to the world. The audience, no,
Speaker 4: audience doesn't matter in any format that they like.
Speaker 2: Does that improve things? It seems like a very odd question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the raging debate. Is it approves access?
Speaker 4: Is what it does? Because didn't we sort of imagine
Speaker 4: that when the Internet arrived fully to average accessibility to people,
Speaker 4: that somebody would step up and say, all right, We're
Speaker 4: going to have this musical experience through the Internet, which
Speaker 4: was or four totally unavailable to us when we had
Speaker 4: to put music onto a CD or a record or
Speaker 4: something like that. I'm going to play a thirty five
Speaker 4: hour something because I can do that now, and I'm
Speaker 4: sure people did this, but it didn't quite come on
Speaker 4: maybe the way I imagine, But I think that the
Speaker 4: container has always been too much dictating how we're going
Speaker 4: to understand and consume music.
Speaker 3: Isn't it going to the record store by the record?
Speaker 1: You think it's also to do with the democracy of
Speaker 1: the internet. I don't think that music. Now here's here's
Speaker 1: a let's discuss does music flourish in a democracy? Because
Speaker 1: I suspect it doesn't like it does It's not like that. Well,
Speaker 1: we talk about authorship of music. You know, you can
Speaker 1: get collaborations, famous collaborations, Lanna McCartney, whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: it's not like there's ever like twenty people get together,
Speaker 1: or at least in my limited experience of music, I
Speaker 1: don't see it as being something which is collaborative to
Speaker 1: a point where everybody gets to say.
Speaker 2: That was always my problem when I was in a band.
Speaker 1: You know that it's it's not a democracy there, someone
Speaker 1: is the dictator.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 4: One version of this is exactly right. Here is the
Speaker 4: music I want you all to play. Let's do it.
Speaker 4: I need your hands to realize this vision. So off
Speaker 4: we go. This is only one path, right, because there's
Speaker 4: communal musical experiences, famously the drums drum circle. Let's get
Speaker 4: right to that. And what is that? This is essentially
Speaker 4: everybody's equal doing whatever their contribution may be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, any drum circlub in part of and thankfully
Speaker 1: I've kind of let that go a little bit in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: But I used to take.
Speaker 1: A drum and set in a drum circle from time
Speaker 1: to time. I assume you've done the same. I think
Speaker 1: I have, yes, doe. You know, is even in a
Speaker 1: drum circle that little power games start to comment at
Speaker 1: the rhythm, don't they commend?
Speaker 4: Isn't this inevitable in any relationship of more than one
Speaker 4: person in a room, there's going to be a dynamic interaction.
Speaker 4: And I mean, I'm sort we're being a little fstious
Speaker 4: about drum circle. But it's true, isn't it. This is
Speaker 4: this is anybody's walking to drift in, drift out, contribute
Speaker 4: your bit, stay as long as you like. If someone
Speaker 4: absolute he despises what Ferguson over here is doing, they
Speaker 4: might give you an elbow or something like that. And
Speaker 4: so some of this starts to.
Speaker 1: Still drum circles that are a little bit like surfers,
Speaker 1: like people think surfers are cool and relaxed.
Speaker 2: And not but they're not.
Speaker 1: They're kind of angry in the territorial and competitive. And
Speaker 1: I think drum circles are a bit like that too,
Speaker 1: that people are like, no, I can actually do you're
Speaker 1: messing up my five eight rhythm that you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel that, But that's that's a different type
Speaker 1: of music. That's a music which the joy of a
Speaker 1: drum circle is participating in the drum circle.
Speaker 3: We're talking about music making. I think.
Speaker 4: So there's music that you might say, I got this
Speaker 4: new record and I'm going to share with you, check
Speaker 4: it out, enjoy it. It's programmed programmatic there it is
Speaker 4: consume it or don't. But music making is something else, isn't.
Speaker 4: It's about participation, drifting in and out, trying to pushing
Speaker 4: pull with other musicians, maybe to contribute an idea or
Speaker 4: find something interesting there. I think there are so many
Speaker 4: channels and avenues and outcomes that offessvals like big ears
Speaker 4: are looking for for more. What else is all this
Speaker 4: horizon that we can hear and enjoy that we haven't
Speaker 4: had access to before, the sense of discovery and looking
Speaker 4: for something that I'm not already very familiar with.
Speaker 2: Is there ever a point when you hear a piece
Speaker 2: of music?
Speaker 1: And like my father, whenever I was watching when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I was watched Top of the Pulps
Speaker 1: was the was the TV show in Britain the kids watched,
Speaker 1: And whenever there was a musical acto on that he
Speaker 1: disapproved of, he would say, that's no music, That's just
Speaker 1: a noise.
Speaker 2: And I would say, you know that, that's kind of
Speaker 2: what music is. It's a noise.
Speaker 1: But is there ever a piece of music where you
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard music and you thought, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't conceive why a human being would want to
Speaker 1: listen to that.
Speaker 4: Sure, there have and a couple of things that come
Speaker 4: across my radar that generally that the idea of stopping
Speaker 4: your listening experience or stopping my listening experience has to
Speaker 4: do with maybe damage, volume, your power. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 4: combination of loud and frequencies and noise. What we talk
Speaker 4: about is noise. Now, this is a tricky area because
Speaker 4: some things that I might think are beautiful and mellifluous,
Speaker 4: you might say are kind of noisy. So we all
Speaker 4: kind of live on the spectrum somewhere. What's tolerable, what's enjoyable,
Speaker 4: what is what sounds appealing certain ways?
Speaker 3: Don't you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's possibly true. I think that's possibly true.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give you the entire the entire thing,
Speaker 1: but yeah, okay, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 2: But listen, what about a world that had let's imagine
Speaker 2: for a moment, a world that has no music at all.
Speaker 4: It's inconceivable, isn't It's it's totally inconceivable to me and
Speaker 4: maybe to others that as humans who like to engage
Speaker 4: and connect to live the human life without music. It's
Speaker 4: just it's just it's beyond it's beyond comprehension. I can't
Speaker 4: imagine it.
Speaker 1: And yet it is so diverse, and like you say,
Speaker 1: everybody's a little bit different, everybody like a lot different.
Speaker 1: Do you think that music contemporary music? Because you're very
Speaker 1: involved in it and all it well well and a
Speaker 1: slightly academic is the wrong word, but you're in a
Speaker 1: cooler area of music than perhaps it's not heavily corporate.
Speaker 1: Although this office in which we say feels a little corporate.
Speaker 3: It doesn't take it up with our people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it doesn't doesn't feel particularly like the main
Speaker 1: drive is the profit on the broadsheet and on the
Speaker 1: spreadsheet here, right, And yet music is huge, multi billion
Speaker 1: dollar industry.
Speaker 4: Well, people get involved for different reasons, don't they. We'll
Speaker 4: talk about entertainment and the arts broadly defined, attracts lots
Speaker 4: of different people for lots of different reasons. So there's
Speaker 4: that that seems pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: But you qualify a music's.
Speaker 1: Value, and I think I already know the answer to this,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask you. Do you give music
Speaker 1: a value in the amount of people that enjoy it
Speaker 1: or the amount of dollars that can raise? Does that
Speaker 1: Does that affect how good a piece of music is?
Speaker 4: I think it's a measure of where that work will
Speaker 4: kind of land in the stratosphere.
Speaker 3: Yes, is it? Is it? Well?
Speaker 4: Good and bad? This is tricky business, isn't it? Because
Speaker 4: I might find enormous satisfaction from an artist's work or
Speaker 4: recording or whatever it was that very few people ever encountered,
Speaker 4: and that's for me, and it's great. This has nothing
Speaker 4: to do with remuneration. It's just all about a connection
Speaker 4: to an individual, in this case me or you. You
Speaker 4: must have records that your friends and family don't care
Speaker 4: for but it's it's important to you.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's also it's
Speaker 1: in a period of time music. Also was that basket
Speaker 1: quote said, the art is how we decorate space.
Speaker 2: Music is how we decorate time.
Speaker 1: And I think for me, I think for a law
Speaker 1: of people, I suspect for you too, the music contains
Speaker 1: it's time travel. If I listen to you know, the
Speaker 1: Damned playing Neat Neat Meat, I'm sixteen years old, you know,
Speaker 1: and I can go back in time travel like that?
Speaker 2: Does that? Do you use it for that?
Speaker 3: Actually?
Speaker 4: That's a it's a really interesting area because probably who
Speaker 4: knows there. I say, most people can hitch musical experiences
Speaker 4: or the records to moments in their life. As you say,
Speaker 4: you suddenly flash back to sixteen years old, I'm in school,
Speaker 4: or first date or what. These sorts of milestones in
Speaker 4: your life are inevitably hitched to something you heard, or
Speaker 4: music that you have in your collection or something like that.
Speaker 4: But I actually really totally deficient in this area. It's unusual,
Speaker 4: I think, But.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is usually for someone so involved
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: That just seems odd to me.
Speaker 4: There are moments through the mile markers in life where
Speaker 4: you I remember that record was happening when such has happened,
Speaker 4: but not so much.
Speaker 1: Give me one, Give me one in your life. Give
Speaker 1: me a moment in your life if you can. When
Speaker 1: you think you associate a piece of music with either
Speaker 1: great happiness or great sadness, or a great turning point
Speaker 1: in your life, or something something that brings you to
Speaker 1: that moment, can you do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Maybe.
Speaker 4: I was thinking the other day about perhaps one of
Speaker 4: the greatest, if not the greatest live concert I've ever
Speaker 4: been to myself was Fishbone in Philadelphia, a small ish
Speaker 4: club that must have been I'm going to guess here
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty seven, nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, some
Speaker 4: late eighties, and it was just one of these nights
Speaker 4: where well, by the end of the night I found
Speaker 4: that my shirt was off. I don't really know where
Speaker 4: anything was. How did this happen? I was just over
Speaker 4: come in. If you've ever seen Fishbone live, then I've
Speaker 4: never seen Fishbone, then you probably had a similar experience
Speaker 4: for the suddenly your you're half naked. I don't know
Speaker 4: how this happened.
Speaker 1: I had way too many experiences where suddenly I was
Speaker 1: half naked, and not enough of them involved fish boone.
Speaker 2: Or indeed music.
Speaker 4: Imagine if that had all come together for you at
Speaker 4: that right moment, things would be different. But that was
Speaker 4: really I share that one because it was really transportative,
Speaker 4: transformational hour.
Speaker 2: Wait what did it do to you? Where did where
Speaker 2: did you start from?
Speaker 3: And where did lead you?
Speaker 2: What was the fork in the road?
Speaker 4: Two things come to mind. It was an overwhelmingly physical,
Speaker 4: fun experience of elation, pure joy, where the band, the music,
Speaker 4: the songs, the energy, the rapport was all in a way.
Speaker 4: It was of a piece where like, man, I'm in
Speaker 4: the middle of If you've seen that, it's like a
Speaker 4: three ring circus. When they're playing, it's just it's mayhem
Speaker 4: but controlled, beautiful, fun, incredible, and it is suddenly lefty,
Speaker 4: I'm in this experience. And years later, this is like
Speaker 4: part two of that question. I was sharing this with somebody,
Speaker 4: like the greatest show I ever saw, Yeah, Fishbone and
Speaker 4: this friend, musician friend said I was there too. Thirty
Speaker 4: years later he says, I was there too. Now there's
Speaker 4: a shared experience, camaraderie. I didn't know him at the time,
Speaker 4: and nor did I know he was in the room,
Speaker 4: of course, But now I have this connection to another
Speaker 4: person who experienced what I experienced. His joy in that room,
Speaker 4: I'm sure was equally greater than mine, and we talked
Speaker 4: about that for a long time. It's really interesting to
Speaker 4: go find someone way down the road that you were
Speaker 4: there too.
Speaker 1: I think that that's interesting to me because I think
Speaker 1: the more we talk about it, and the more I
Speaker 1: hear you talk about it, as we distill it down,
Speaker 1: it's really about human connection. It's really about the unspeakable
Speaker 1: or the nonalytical language of music.
Speaker 4: Well, here is I think where music is totally different
Speaker 4: than the other art forms. Okay, exception of poetry, theater, comedy,
Speaker 4: it's a it's I think there are all forms of music.
Speaker 3: Well you tell me.
Speaker 4: I was just going to say, they're all in music
Speaker 4: where you're managing the illusion of time. You are living
Speaker 4: in an ephemeral world. When the music stops, it's silence,
Speaker 4: and you're living in sound and sound is vibration, which
Speaker 4: is physical, and so something is happening to your body.
Speaker 4: Of course, this is obvious with very loud rhythmic music,
Speaker 4: rock and roll, dance music, R and b. It's also
Speaker 4: true for quiet music that doesn't seem to be doing much,
Speaker 4: long duration of music of Morton Felden, for example, Ava Lucier.
Speaker 4: We talked about that earlier, or the Jerone music of Sun,
Speaker 4: Lamont Young and others doesn't seem like much it's going on,
Speaker 4: but vibration is happening, and I.
Speaker 1: Really it is a mood altering Sun, which is a
Speaker 1: music live for that I've started to get into recently,
Speaker 1: and I we were talking about it, and I'm saying, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I listened to it correctly, because I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the band perform live, but I listened to
Speaker 1: drown Mantle quietly and use it as an ambient side,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if that's acceptable to the musician,
Speaker 1: but it's how I enjoy it.
Speaker 4: You come to it, I suppose you. We all approach
Speaker 4: music however we come to it. And I'm sure I
Speaker 4: don't know about the guys and Sun, but I imagine
Speaker 4: it would say that's fine, you take take what we
Speaker 4: have to offer and enjoy it as you wish. But
Speaker 4: there's something physical about all of this activity and music
Speaker 4: that I believe that the body begins to react much
Speaker 4: quicker than your mind does. So things are happening to
Speaker 4: you before you've had a chance to sort of puzzle
Speaker 4: out what's going on here. And this is different than
Speaker 4: standing in front of a picture. I think it's also
Speaker 4: a communal aspect to this too as well. Now you're
Speaker 4: talking about live music. Though live music, I think there's
Speaker 4: two things going on simultaneously to me, which is I'm
Speaker 4: having this personal, very solitary, singular experience with the sound
Speaker 4: that the artist is giving to me. I use the
Speaker 4: word sound in this case, not song or accomplish or whatever, Okay, vibration.
Speaker 4: But there's also a room full of people and they're
Speaker 4: having this experience too, so we're all in this together.
Speaker 4: With the live experience, or even if you're in a
Speaker 4: room with your buddies listening to a record, it's a
Speaker 4: shared experience.
Speaker 1: So I sti't think I do that anymore. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the time music is solitary. Now it's
Speaker 1: headphones and earbunds.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's the availability, isn't it isn't it the
Speaker 1: maybe it's too available.
Speaker 4: Do you find I'm going to ask you a question,
Speaker 4: do you find that with the ultimate availability of all
Speaker 4: sound courtesy of your phone and the internet and all
Speaker 4: the rest. That your interest or passions for music and
Speaker 4: performance has changed more or less. You're going for more,
Speaker 4: going for less? Do you think about it differently?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: I think that I think of it did, and I
Speaker 1: think what happened is is that I've circled back around.
Speaker 1: Very recently, I invested in a proper piece of hi
Speaker 1: fi equipment with a day that would play Vinyl through
Speaker 1: speakers into my room and out loud. And I my
Speaker 1: twelve year old son, who had never heard vinyl played before,
Speaker 1: I said, come here, I want to show you something.
Speaker 2: He is a musician.
Speaker 1: And he sat in my lap and I put on
Speaker 1: a Glasswegian electronic band called Mogwai who are fabulous Yes,
Speaker 1: And I played it a decent volume and I let
Speaker 1: him hear and he let up. Now he's this is
Speaker 1: a kid that was listening to He wouldn't ever listen
Speaker 1: to children's music when he was a toddler. He was like, no, no, no, dad,
Speaker 1: it's Iggy or boy or you know, and he would
Speaker 1: that was this thing and his mother got him into
Speaker 1: it very early. But he looked at me as it
Speaker 1: was coming through the vinyl and the speakers, and he
Speaker 1: got kind of flushed and he went, what is this
Speaker 1: And I said, this is vinyl and he said, I
Speaker 1: feel I've.
Speaker 2: Been robbed, and I said you have.
Speaker 1: And he's gotten very into it, and he and his
Speaker 1: friends have gotten very into So I think there is
Speaker 1: a The availability is great, but I think that something
Speaker 1: is always.
Speaker 2: Lost when the neighborhood is gentrified.
Speaker 1: And I think that that that's happened a little bit
Speaker 1: with the digitization of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right about this, I don't when you tell
Speaker 4: me the story about your twelve year old, I immediately
Speaker 4: think part of his reaction is the physicality of hearing
Speaker 4: your excellent, undoubtedly excellent high five system with your radial
Speaker 4: damned record going on to the turntable or whatever it was,
Speaker 4: and now you're in a room here experiencing sound.
Speaker 3: And it hits your body.
Speaker 4: And it is very that's happening to me, or words
Speaker 4: to this effect, you know, Yeah, different than your little
Speaker 4: white earbud that gives you information but maybe not a
Speaker 4: lot of good sound.
Speaker 1: Well, what I did as well is when I started
Speaker 1: putting on albums which I've been hearing digit late for
Speaker 1: years and then go back and hear. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I couldn't hear that stuff, but there are instruments
Speaker 1: that had disappeared into the digital process.
Speaker 4: And I love records also albums LPs, but I love
Speaker 4: CDs and digital music in the right moment. For example,
Speaker 4: I mentioned Morton Feldman, the great American composer from the
Speaker 4: mid century who wrote music of great duration, very quiet.
Speaker 4: It was in the scores like three or four piece,
Speaker 4: very very very quiet, which didn't profit from being on
Speaker 4: LP because there'll be long gaps of silence between notes
Speaker 4: which would in heaviably spots. And so in some ways
Speaker 4: I felt that the CD was invented from music of
Speaker 4: Morton Feldman, because when you the score calls for silence,
Speaker 4: you get silence, and that is equally powerful, isn't it.
Speaker 4: To hearing and indulging and enjoying. Music is concentrated listening.
Speaker 4: I'm making some assumptions here that when we're listening to
Speaker 4: music we're actually listening.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 1: But I think you concentrate and listen to music. I
Speaker 1: don't think everyone does that.
Speaker 4: People do at different times. Sure, sometimes I'm vacuuming and
Speaker 4: the stones records are or whatever, But you're not concentrating,
Speaker 4: you've got music in the room. But when you're listening
Speaker 4: deep listening, listening deeply and concentrating, everything is becomes vivid
Speaker 4: because you're your focus, You're really focus, you're listening this music. Music.
Speaker 2: Let let me then just wrap this up.
Speaker 1: Music still brings you joy, even although you are within it,
Speaker 1: even though you are surrounded by even tho though you
Speaker 1: are procuring it for other people, it still works.
Speaker 4: It's a search, isn't it. I feel it's an endless
Speaker 4: search for where can I find that experience again? Maybe
Speaker 4: it's the next Fishbone concert? Are you still looking for
Speaker 4: the next Fishbone concert?
Speaker 3: Yes? Please, guys, come back.
Speaker 4: I'm always We're always, aren't we always looking for something
Speaker 4: that's an experience in the room that levitates us through
Speaker 4: sound or through other media.
Speaker 3: But never ends.
Speaker 2: And now all right, we gotta go.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you for having me here at this table.
Speaker 2: It was, in fact a joy.
Speaker 1: Yeah,